


Tentacle Days (A little vision of the start and the end)

by winterysomnium



Category: DCU - Comicverse
Genre: M/M, Tentacle AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-03-05
Updated: 2013-03-05
Packaged: 2017-12-04 09:37:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/709285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winterysomnium/pseuds/winterysomnium
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’s wet, his cape and the outside of his shoulders and his mouth, it’s all wet and tastes like greenery, like water and grass and being under it and he’s waking up to cough it all out of his chest, out of the landscape of his throat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tentacle Days (A little vision of the start and the end)

**Author's Note:**

> First title is varebanos' idea, the second title is a lyric from the song "Breath of Life" by Florence and the Machine.

The fall isn’t the worst of it. 

It’s explosive, it’s loud where it deafens, loud where it mutes every grunt and gasp, every hoarse croak to near, vague soundlessness, fast where it breaks against Tim’s bones; it’s heat where Tim’s identity stays. 

It’s bad, it’s gravity catching up, it’s the river beneath him tearing at its nests but it’s not the worst of it, it’s not the breaking of his neck. 

As long as he’s falling, as long as he’s boneless against the ground but full of bones against the wind, there are still possibilities. Someone might have seen; someone might have called; someone might be able to catch him. Dick could swing and snatch him in a wide, slowed down arc, could press him against his ribcage and muscle and Kevlar side, Tim’s underground, under uniform blood soaking them both, like strings and ribbons between them, tying them into knots. Bruce could curl a line around his chest or hips or ankles; could pull him into his car or plane or arms, could scold him with quiet concern, with loud, mute lines drifting across his face. Kon could hear his faint body and Kon could fall as low as Tim, could meet him from the dry, stone grounds and stop and slow and reverse his descend, could drop him against the driest, nearest rooftop and fumble with the slick, rusty feeling between his knuckles, could search for the newborn scar. 

They could but they won’t; the seconds up before Tim thinks of them all, before Tim can drop his clumsy, rough fingers down his utility belt, before he’s aware who he’s dying as. 

He counts, grits, stays for the worse of it; for the moment he’ll connect, the moment the water will soothe his vague burns, the moment he’ll seep through the waves to the bottom, dissolving his bloodlines into muddy streams, escaping bubble crumbs as misleading as footsteps; he stays for the moment he has to fight to swim. 

But the worst, the most panicked, the most terrifying of it is: that he’s blacking out.

\---

Tim wakes up, small and dizzy. He’s wet, his cape and the outside of his shoulders and his mouth, it’s all wet and tastes like greenery, like water and grass and being under it and he’s waking up to cough it all out of his chest, out of the landscape of his throat. The hazy place is stitched through shadows, stitched with drips and cold cavings and Tim is reminded of home, of the dry flap of leather, naked wings, of plastic creaking thorough the echoes, just as the river echoes here.

The insides of his lungs are damp too, the air here feels even damper and when he sits up something moves with him, something holds the same gravity and his side _jerks_ , hisses as he curls into himself, unfolding after nothing spills, after he’s breathing against the needles and razors and pins, after he tries to touch the injury and meets – meets more slick, warm wetness, meets something new. Meets smooth, pliant skin, meets a firm, soft structure; gasps and scrambles back, an inch, a dig of a heel and the round, white column of the light stick he pulls out of his soggy pouch shines against the rotund dips, against the glister of the foreign skin, against the proximity between them.

The arm, the body, the _tentacles_ slink closer to his boots, to the shore of the stone he was dragged to, dragged and held against and – and _saved_. 

The squishy, warm tentacle doesn’t budge when Tim prods, when he’s wide eyed and stubbornly scared, when he swallows every humid scent down, coughing through the cold.

“You – helped me,” he looks at the animal, the mutated, vast sea creature that glows in black luminescence, that illuminates in tiny, reddish circles; beautiful and unreal.

“You pulled me here, didn’t you? You even – you even tried to stop the bleeding.” The creature breathes, slowly curls two of his tentacles between Tim’s ankles and tugs at his boots, swims, presses closer, until its belly scrapes against the rough, river stone. 

Taking off his gloves, Tim softly strokes the inky, tight tentacle wound around his hip, careful and tentative as if he was touching glass, the sides of its shards. He smiles when another wet, supple tip taps at the center of his chest, an imploding knock, a touch that doesn’t reverberate but leaves a print, an outline of its presence. Tim closes his fingers around it, imitates a short, subtle handshake as another tip tries to slip under his cowl and with more of his weak, faintly echoing laugh, Tim complies.

Soon, he’s going to bandage his cracked, sliced hip properly. Soon, he’s going to swallow some pills dry, preventing infection and fever. Soon, he’s going to try to swim and get away and the creature will cradle him, will carry him out of the river, will lower him into the grass, spotted by the yawning sunlight.

Soon, he will stumble with trying to say thank you, with the tentacles curling around his knees, with leaving.

Now, the creature tugs at his wrist, places it onto the pouch where he keeps his bandages and confusion, wonder, _awe_ substitutes the fear.

“But _why_ did you help me…”

Drowning the question in the reflections of the underground pools, Tim takes out the bandages and grits his teeth.

(And doesn’t think about the consciousness he feels apart from his own.)


End file.
